The Bristol Rovers Courier
Market9 Jul 2029
Terms done: Brad Young is going
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Preston waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Bristol Rovers is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market9 Jul 2029
Yasir Al-Sinan puts it in writing
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Bristol Rovers, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market9 Jul 2029
Deportivo La Coruña come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Bristol Rovers did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market9 Jul 2029
Ryan Croasdale is on his way
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bristol Rovers is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Words exchanged at Bristol Rovers
Will Alves and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad9 Jul 2029
A late step up for Will Alves
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Squad9 Jul 2029
The step up is real for Jack Simmons
At 17 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad9 Jul 2029
Cédric Kipré falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The dugout9 Jul 2029
When it matters, Ryan De Havilland plays
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
In brief
- The dugout No hiding place for Nicholas Cooper
- The dugout The manager makes Ryan De Havilland a promise
- The dugout Harrison Duncan knocks on the manager's door